


Shout! Shout! Let It All Out! Part One

by ANaTHEMaDEVIsed



Series: Shout! Shout! Let It All Out! [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Magicians (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-10-31 18:21:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10904856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ANaTHEMaDEVIsed/pseuds/ANaTHEMaDEVIsed
Summary: Hermione goes to Brakebills.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Beta: N/A, Read at your own peril.
> 
> Rating: Could get spicy, PG for now  
> Fandom: Harry Potter and The Magicians
> 
> Pairings: Hermione Granger/Julia Wicker
> 
>  
> 
> Disclaimer:  
> All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work belong to their respective owners. As this material is an interpretation of the original and not for profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
> 
> Spoilers:  
> All of it.
> 
> Author’s Notes:  
> Just a little fluff and fun.

One

 

When it’s all over but the shouting, that’s what her father used to say. It’s the moment when you know that anything that happens after is just the curtain drawing closed. Hermione knew, her eyes wide with fear and understanding, as she lay on the cold, stone floor while a maniac carved a hateful thing into her flesh. It was all over, but the shouting. She was no longer an innocent. So, she became a participant. She survived, committing every act stipulated by the essence of the word. Survival left it solely to her to decide on the breadth and depth of her contribution. And she aptly had chosen to cleave an unrepentantly bloody path in history that would name her a soldier, a muggle-born hero, worshipped until the perspective of hindsight had the necessary distance and time to get it nearly right.

 

The war, looking back, was politics at its worst - a lie fed to a malleable, disempowered populace. The outcome, it had not failed in its proclaimed mission to cull great evil from the world in the name of supposed equanimity. It had not failed, because it had not ever intended to try. What remained was what would always remain, the primacy of status. All that would ever change was the shape of the figureheads, not the thoughts within them.

 

Hermione had known from the first to the last great sacrifice, she’d immolate her youth on the pyre of their great war and return not a soldier, not a hero, certainly not a martyr, but a mid-level bureaucrat with vast potential untapped. What had she but the daily reminder of the lie in the barely repressed scorn of her so-called betters. Blood purism would always find a way back from the shadows in which it festered. Thus, she made a choice in the fall, after passing her O.W.L.S. and accepting a position as a clerk at the Wizengamot. She made the choice to leave. 

 

“Hermione?”

 

“Hey, Harry.” Hermione toggled the speaker on her mobile phone and continue her very focused efforts to sort through old scrolls from school, notes, old quills and ink wells that would not be making the upcoming move with her.

 

“Cell phone? Really?” Harry’s voice was nonplussed. 

 

“You’re not going to be able to reach me elsewise and if you intend to keep in touch you’ll adapt.” Hermione murmured only half listening.

 

“Come on. What is all this? You take an appointment as a clerk and then resign in a month?” Harry heaved a sigh, putting on his big brotherly tone. “If this is about you and Ron …”

 

“It’s never been about me and Ron, Harry. And the fact that the two of you keep belaboring the point does anything but make me question my decision, believe me.”

 

“But you two were …”

 

“A high school fling in the middle of one of the most emotionally traumatic experiences a person can endure. We were comfort for each other. We all were.” Hermione sighed sitting back on her heels as she knelt in the midst of the disarray she was attempting to organize into a streamlined relocation effort. “I’m not going to settle for the fabricated ending that the journalists of the wizarding news have chosen to make canonical as though our lives are inextricably intertwined and dipped in golden light. You know as well as I do, Harry, that there is nothing that shines pure or bright out of that past or this present unless we close our eyes fervently to pretend it does.”

 

“Mione, I know you’ve …” She could hear him swallow, hesitating to say it aloud, make it more real. 

 

“I’ve what, Harry?” Hermione huffed, so tired of this awkward little two-step between stark denial and hesitant admission to which her school friends so often resorted.

 

“Struggled with … I know it’s difficult to let go of the things that happened. But you must. It’s time to move on.” Hermione snorted at this. Well, she thought, in a way he wasn’t wrong. That was exactly what she intended. She no longer wanted to be their obedient, erstwhile, companion. It was time she was her own witch.

 

“That, my friend, is precisely what I have planned.” Hermione replied, not allowing Harry to regroup and take another approach. “You take care. You have the number. Use it sometime. Let me know how you are.”

 

“Wait, Hermione!” Harry called, even as she hung up and switched the phone to do not disturb. She preferred to finish packing and catch her plane without any additional distraction. The final chapter in the book about the Boy who Lived and his best friends, already had its conclusion. Now Hermione had to pen her own saga and see it through to the end.

 

 

Two

 

“You’re the new first year. You got in without taking the exam.”

 

Hermione arched her brow at the underlying suspicion and challenge in the non-greeting. The girl was, petite and pale, with dark hair and fathomless eyes. Hermione could recall having seen eyes like that up close only once before. She shuddered at the memory, inadvertently tugging at the cuff of her shirt though it had not slipped down her wrist. She’d taken to the American custom of wearing active wear in every context. Runners' half zips all had the obligatory thumb holes that kept cuffs obediently in place, never to expose one’s wrists.

 

“Who’s asking?” Hermione countered standing her ground with an arched brow. She believed the phrase they used on this side of the world was, come at me bro. She wouldn’t start this new life by standing down to the first witch she met through the door. The girl smirked, apparently having observed something at least mildly amusing in Hermione’s response.

 

“You’ll do.” The girl replied. “Welcome to Brakebills. I don’t go here.” She extended a hand, “Julia Wicker.” Hermione glanced at the hand only for a moment, recognizing it instantly to be one she’d look back on either with regret or …

 

“Hermione Granger.” Hermione gave a firm shake, meeting those eyes, full of shadow and saw in them a hint of her own torment. She glanced away, taking in the inexplicable energy of what appeared to be a mid-day cocktail party just beyond the foyer of what was soon to be her new home. Julia grinned at the naked shock on Hermione’s face as a trio of second years wearing little more than their smiles sidled past, groping hands leading little doubt as to what they were headed to do if not where they intended to do it.

 

“Yeah, tends to get a bit bacchanal around here. How about a tour?”

 

“I thought you said you don’t go here.” Hermione replied, shifting her shoulders until the weight of her backpack was a little less uncomfortable. The walk from the administration building with her luggage in tow had been a bit arduous. The wheels on her suitcase were little help in navigating the overgrown path through the woods that led her to the front door of her dormitory.

 

“I don’t.” Julia confirmed, gesturing for Hermione to follow her upstairs. “And that’s a story far too long and involved for a tour as short as this will be.”

 

“Then perhaps you should share it over a drink.” Hermione countered, marveling at her own temerity even as the words fled her lips. Julia paused mid-step, turning to regard Hermione with yet another of her amused smirks.

 

“Quid pro quo?” She inquired, to which Hermione gave a half shrug and nodded. Why not? New life, she could tell a story about her old one, didn’t mean she was reliving it. Julia turned, a continued up the stairs humming in pleasure or approval, Hermione couldn’t say which. “Right this way, English.”

 

Three

 

First day, Hermione was just about laughed out of class when she produced her wand from her shirt sleeve. The ridicule was quickly silenced when she set all except the professor’s desk on fire with a flick of her wrist. She then encased the desks in ice. The shrieking, flailing and general disorder that ensued was immediately vindicating though the thunderous expression on Professor March’s face as she restored the desks to their properly ice-free appearance didn’t bode well. Now instead of March’s class, she spent an hour each afternoon in the week since talking with Dean Fogg in his office. She wasn’t sure if it was therapy or instruction. She was just relieved she hadn’t been summarily tossed on her ass for what Professor March had described as a reckless and juvenile disregard for school property and the safety of her fellow classmates.

 

“Still on punishment, pyro?”

 

“Still in hiding, God-killer?” Hermione retorted as she tossed herself onto the end of the sofa where Julia lounged idly flipping through a text on … Hermione squinted her eyes to read, “I thought you’d read all of the battle magic books in the library?” Hermione remarked off-handedly.

 

“I have. I stole this one from Mayakovsky’s private stash.” Julia replied, then seeing Hermione’s wide-eyed response given how far Professor Mayakovsky’s reputation proceeded him. “He won’t miss it.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“He’s got his hands full channeling Alice’s crazy. Last thing he’s going to take notice of is me picking through a few of his dusty old …” Julia paused rethinking for a moment, “I’ll have it back by this evening.”

 

“That’s what I thought you said.” Hermione smirked, and leaned back, closing her eyes for a moment. She didn’t know what she’d been expecting when she hopped a plane across the Atlantic, hoping to discard tragedy for triumph. She certainly hadn’t been expecting any of this. She’d listened raptly to Julia’s stories of actual living gods and parallel universes, and she’d believed because every word had sung to something inside of her that had known there was a world so far beyond the tiny enclave in which she grown up. Here a brown girl with frizzy hair who knew her own mind, wasn’t an unwelcome swot. 

 

“Hey.” Hermione cracked her eyes open, turning her head to regard the woman who was quickly becoming a friend. So quickly, Hermione could attest that Julia had an uncanny ability for delving deeply into one’s unrevealed thoughts. “Want to see something … amazing?” From anyone else, those words may have chalked up to an admittedly breathtaking view from any of the old building’s on campus. From Julia Wicker, Hermione knew at once, amazing was well beyond anything quite so mundane. Sitting up, she gazed intently and replied.

 

“Absolutely.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by The Neverending Story

One

When it is dark and silent, air can feel heavy against the skin. Herrmione waited for the weighty sensation of an idle breeze, an indication of movement, of something present, something more than herself. There was nothing. Julia had taken her hand and whispered an incantation that swept them away from everything. Wait … there. This all-encompassing nothing that had become everything coalesced into the soft brush of lips that left the lingering trace of French Verveine and Mint. Hermione smiled with the thought that it was an interesting choice of make out spot. She felt an answering quirk of amusement as Julia drew away, disappearing again into the empty into which they’d been deposited.

After a moment, the dark seemed not entirely encompassing. The ink that clung to sight receded to gray, brightening, focusing into a single spot. Hermione blinked, startled by the brilliance. Her sight adjusted, taking in the outline of Julia’s features illuminated by this finite point.

“Do you know what happens when you kill a god?” Julia asked. Hermione shook her head sagely. “When you kill a god,” Julia continued, “You become the beneficiary of a grand and terrible inheritance.” Julia shook her head, movement ghostly in the contrast of dark and light. “And for this reason, one also inherits an unexpected responsibility. In death,” Julia shrouded the light in the palms of her hands, cupping and closing until it nearly disappeared. Her flesh translucent, bore an eerie glow at the cracks between her clasped fingers. “There must also be birth.” She opened her palms and Hermione again blinked away the temporary blur of white-blindness.

The warmth of fingers twining with her own was just enough of a distraction to still the tide of questions and an instant later they had returned to the dorm and the bedroom in which Julia was ostensibly squatting indefinitely. Hermione met Julia’s watery gaze, shocked to see tears rolling freely down lightly freckled cheeks.

“Thank you.” Julia murmured.

“For?” Hermione reached out and traced her thumbs along the slick tracks of Julia’s tears.

“Helping me restore a necessary balance.” Julia answered. She turned her head so her lips brushed against the inside of Hermione’s wrist just above the cuff. It startled Hermione, enough she almost wrenched away, fear inciting her heart to beat an anxious counterpoint. She knew that shameful scar was hidden from view. And she also knew that Julia Wicker saw a lot more than what was written on any surface. But Julia’s lips were warmth, and caring, and now they even sowed the breath of creation when mingled with Hermione’s own.

“So,” Hermione murmured, as her heartbeat slowed to an accelerated tempo attributable to the close proximity of a woman as lovely and terrifying as Julia Wicker. “That’s how it feels to create a world.” Julia grinned, leaned in and answered.

“Yeah, when creating a world …” She let her lips meet Hermione’s yet again so agonizingly light, and so delectably soft. “Happens to coincide with kissing the girl.”


End file.
